


Spades

by Aansero



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 03:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3103649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aansero/pseuds/Aansero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lestrade escapes a murderer with the help of John Watson and a couple of spades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spades

**Author's Note:**

> Not betaed; if anyone sees any mistakes please point them out!
> 
> This is a present :) you know who you are.

Well, Greg thought in a vague attempt to be positive, if there was someone he’d choose to be with him in a complete fuck-up like this, it’d be John Watson.

Then he shifted, because the floor was cold and hard and making his back ache, and all positivity left him as the pain of his broken left leg shot right up his hips, into his spine, and bounced about in his skull. He grimaced but didn’t make a sound, because Watson was facing away and therefore couldn’t see anything but the inky blackness of the hallway, but the house was deadly silent and he’d definitely hear a groan, no matter how muffled.

Greg forced his shoulders to relax and his head to fall back against the peeling wallpaper. He glanced out of the window. How long had they been here, now? It was going to be properly dark soon – a pitch-black darkness, an I-can’t-see-my-goddamn-hand-two-inches-in-front-of-my-face dark. Fuck it all, Greg thought. This is why I don’t leave London.

They’d been tracking a murderer, James Caldwell, and when said murderer had fled London he should have shrugged and fobbed the case off on some other department. But instead Sherlock Holmes had happened, and here he was, in god forsaken Wiltshire. With a broken leg, in an abandoned farmhouse with John Watson in full army mode and Sherlock somewhere in the countryside, supposedly looking for help – but out of London? No doubt miserably lost. Probably lying in a field with a broken neck from tripping on a rabbit hole.

Greg gripped his thigh as tight as he could. It didn’t really do anything to dull the pain, which felt like his whole bloody shin was on fire, but he kept at it anyway. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. That didn’t work either. He’d tried to persuade Watson to leave with Sherlock, back hours ago when they’d escaped the car crash and the more-or-less hostage situation where they’d lost all their phones, his airwave, and John’s gun that they were both very carefully not mentioning – but that had failed like everything else, of course. 

Greg shifted again, and this time he did groan, but only a little. In front of him, the dark shape that was John Watson didn’t move.

He’d heard rumours about Watson – of course he had. PTSD. Bouts of violence. Panic attacks. Flashbacks. He didn’t know how many were true. John Watson was a good bloke. Greg was a good copper, which meant that he was also a suspicious one. Watson had splinted up his leg with quick and calm hands, face tight but otherwise expressionless.

There was a sound outside. A normal countryside sound, or a murderer? Greg squinted at Watson, who hadn’t appeared to move, but it was getting to the point where it was too dark to really tell. Another noise, then another, like someone kicking half-heartedly at something old and wooden. He’d hoped that Caldwell would decide to run for it, once his attempt to take them hostage had gone tits up, but apparently not.

A smash: the front door that Watson had barricaded with furniture, no doubt about it. Greg flinched and bit his tongue to stop himself from swearing. Fuck it. Fuck it all. He did not want to die. Not in Wiltshire.

Watson moved at last, standing up and moving to Greg’s side. He was walking stiffly – just bruises, he’d said. He hadn’t let anyone check.

‘We’re going,’ he said, voice an undertone, but sharp. Commanding. Greg nodded before realising the implications, then kept nodding anyway.

The second smash at the front of the house made them both stiffen. Greg had his arm around Watson’s shoulders, leaning on him as heavily as he dared, and light as he could. His leg had jarred when he’d got up and the pain hadn’t receded yet. He was very deliberately not thinking about having to stumble about outside in the dark.

They left the house through the back door, where there was a black lawn of knee high grass and brambles, holding each other like unlikely players in a three-legged race. Watson had found two spades, carrying one himself and giving the other to Greg as an additional crutch. Even supported on both sides the pain of his leg made Greg’s gorge rise, and with every awkward hop he concentrated half on whether there was any sign they were being followed, and half on not throwing up. His jaw ached with how hard he was clenching it. There was sweat beading on his forehead, making his skin cold. His spade kept catching on the plants and needing to be tugged free.

‘You okay?’ They’d paused about a hundred metres from the house, and Watson was peering at him. It felt like a half dozen thousand metres, sprinting.

‘What the hell do you think,’ Greg snapped, under his breath, and the words were barely audible under the strain and wheeze of his lungs. Bent over as he was, he was a little shorter than Watson. He couldn’t see his expression, but then, couldn’t bring himself to care much either. He could feel his own pulse in his chest, his broken leg, and in his skull, right behind the backs of his eyes. It felt far too fast.

‘There’s not much cover here,’ Watson said in a whisper. ‘We’re going to have to keep going.’

‘Christ’s sake,’ Greg said, and blew out a long breath through his teeth. ‘Alright then. Lead on.’

They’d only gone another few metres, shuffling around endless tangles of brambles, when Watson froze. He hissed something indistinct and turned. Greg already knew exactly what he’d see if he looked back, but he looked anyway.

Blackness, under a black-blue sky. And a smudge of movement, about the shape of a man, coming out across the lawn towards them. The crunching sound of footsteps came to him and Greg wasted a moment wondering how he’d missed that until now.

‘Get down!’ The hissed words were the only warning he got before he was shoved down – mercifully on the side of his unbroken leg, but Greg only just managed to not yell out in pain. He choked back any breath threatening to emerge, and with his eyes tight shut he bit his lip, hard. His hands had found their way to his leg, clinging on just below the knee. His trousers were wet from the grass. Thorns stuck into one side of his face.

When he opened his eyes he could see Watson silhouetted against the cloud-patched, star-speckled sky. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he managed, before Watson ignored him completely and left him there.

Greg levered himself into sitting, not caring that he’d put one hand directly on top a bramble cane and the thorns were sticking into his palm and not letting go. Watson was a dark shape about twenty metres away, though it was hard to tell.

A gunshot rang out. Watson dropped. Then, a second later, he stumbled up and kept running, dodging from side to side. Another gunshot, and another. Caldwell was making directly for Watson now. Greg couldn’t move, frozen on the wet ground – it’ll be fine, he told himself. There was no way someone untrained in guns could shoot a moving target in the dark. He should get up and escape while he had the chance. They were both going to be fine.

He’d got up, leaning heavily on his spade, when there was the unmistakable sound of someone tripping, colliding with something solid and falling, snapping branches and thrashing limbs in leaves. Caldwell came to a stop even as Watson was scrambling to his feet. The clouds had cleared and the moon illuminated Caldwell as a pale smear in the tangles of shadows around him.

Two more shots, then a clicking noise as the gun ran out of bullets. Caldwell stood still for a long moment, then turned towards Greg. Behind him Watson was silent, invisible among the plants.

He’d made it about two metres by the time Caldwell caught up. Greg swung his spade and only managed to unbalance himself, keeping his feet beneath him but only just. Caldwell dodged the blow and wrestled the spade from him with embarrassing ease, before he tossed it to the ground behind him.

‘Fuck you,’ Greg snarled. His stomach felt tense, sick with pain and grief and tightly wound fury. His leg was throbbing in agony, refusing to let itself go forgotten. What would he say to Sherlock? he thought, for a second.

Caldwell got him in a rugby tackle, pushing him down and kneeling on his broken leg. Greg yelled, which turned into a wordless scream as Caldwell ground down hard. He kicked out with his right leg, and grappled at Caldwell’s face with his hands, until he managed to roll free. Dirt and bits of dead leaf got into his mouth. Thorns clung to both his clothes and his skin.

Caldwell was searching the ground around him, breathing harsh and unsteady. Greg watched him in incomprehension as he scrambled back on his arse, broken leg trailing, only understanding when Caldwell stood, gripping the spade tight in both hands.

He drove it down at Greg. The blade hit the ground, splitting the grass stems and bramble canes, embedding itself into the earth with a distinct chopping sound. Wrenching it back up Caldwell swung it, and the flat of the blade caught Greg across the chest. The next blow hit with the flat side again, but on his legs, and Greg felt something shift inside the broken one. He yelled, short and cracking.

He’d closed his eyes, hands up in front of his face, when the next blow fell. He could hear it: dry, heavy. But he felt nothing. He wondered whether he was dying. Then, a split second after the sound of another impact, accompanied this time by the sound of a body falling, he understood with a jolt and opened his eyes.

He was just in time to see Watson drive the spade straight down into Caldwell’s chest. The blade crunched through the bones of his ribs and spattered with blood. Caldwell sucked in a long breath that bubbled in his throat and mouth, but didn’t scream. Watson heaved the spade up and drove it into his chest again, swinging down with both hands. Then he did it again, and again, and again. Then he carefully put the spade down on the ground next to the motionless body.

‘Lestrade?’ he said, and his voice was steady. ‘Are you hurt?’

Greg found himself answering without meaning to. He looked at the lumpy, still shape of Caldwell in front of him. Even in the dark it was obvious that he was soaking wet. ‘He got my leg. And my chest. Maybe broke some ribs.’

Watson crouched down in front of Greg, feeling along his legs, one at a time, then pressing gently on his chest. ‘Hasn’t broken the skin. Breathe deep,’ he commanded, and Greg breathed deep, halting as a sharp pain stabbed through his ribcage.

‘Not too bad,’ he said, and Watson made a non-committal noise.

‘He didn’t have our phones on him,’ he said. ‘We should move away.’

‘Yeah.’ The stink of fresh blood was just starting to hit Greg. He was feeling dangerously light-headed. A wind was picking up, brisk and very cold.

They moved back towards the house, limping, progress painfully slow, then stopped after about ten metres.

‘Don’t want to disturb your ribs or leg too much,’ Watson said. Greg was about to protest, but he realised that he was gasping his breaths, so he didn’t. He lay down, trying to ignore the scratchy foliage beneath him, and chased a piece of grit around his mouth with his tongue before spitting it out. For someone who’d just watched a man kill another man with a spade, he was being very calm, he considered. Then he thought: for someone who’d just killed another man with a spade, Watson was being very calm as well. 

It was cold. He had starting to shiver, which was making it feel like someone was repeatedly stabbing his leg with a long, thin knife. Watson must have heard the catch in his breathing, because he shrugged off his coat and tucked it around Greg. When Greg protested he just shook his head.

‘I’m not the one who’s had both a car and a crazed murderer try put me out of my misery,’ he said.

Greg laughed, then groaned when his ribs protested. ‘But you were shot,’ he said. ‘What the hell happened there?’

‘Stupid bastard watched too many films. They’ll let you think any idiot with a gun can shoot and hit his target. He missed. I played dead so he’d be distracted with you.’ A pause. ‘Sorry. It was a bit of a shit plan, wasn’t it.’

Greg would have shrugged, had he not been lying down, and in pain, and in a night too dark for it to be seen anyway. ‘Yeah,’ he said, then added: ‘It worked, though.’

Watson chucked. He sounded very tired. ‘Just about.’

They fell into a silence. The wind blew across Greg’s face, crawling down his neck. His left leg felt like it was on fire. His right leg felt frozen stiff. The top of his chest was uncomfortably warm, but his back equally cold. He wondered how long it would take for the police and ambulance to finally arrive. He swore to never leave London again.

He thought of Caldwell’s body lying ten metres away, chest a ruin and leaking blood everywhere. The image of Caldwell not being quite dead yet came to him and wouldn’t leave.

‘How’s your breathing?’ Watson said. Greg jolted in surprise.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Bloody hurts, but not too bad. Can still breathe.’

‘Good. That’s good.’ Watson stood up. ‘Anyway, the ambulance is here.’


End file.
